1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card connector mounted on a printed circuit board to allow an electrical connection to be made between a PC card and the printed circuit board.
2. Brief Description of Prior Developments
Generally, in order to enhance both the miniaturization and expendability of an electronic apparatus such as a notebook type computer, various types of card connectors have been developed which connect a PC card equipped with various functions to an electronic apparatus.
Such a card connector includes a connector frame comprising a pair of guide arms with PC card insertion slots formed therein and a header section integrally joined to the guide arms and is screwed to the printed circuit board via the connector frame. In the case where a card connector has mutually stacked two headers so as to deal with PC cards of different thicknesses, these headers and guide arms are coupled together as one unit by brackets of a thin metal and it is screwed to the printed circuit board through the brackets. In either case, a slight clearance is created between the card connector and the printed circuit board.
In the recent tendency of the electronic apparatus toward its miniaturization and high-performance functioning, there may sometimes the cases where it is preferable to mount the card connector on the upper or the lower side of a printed circuit board as the necessity arises in these electronic apparatuses.
Even if, however, the card connector is mounted on either side of the printed circuit board, it is desirable that, in order to prevent any insertion error of the PC card, the polarity, that is, the surface side, of the IC card be always set in the same correct side. For this reason, where the conventional card connector is to be mounted on the other surface side of the printed circuit board, it has been necessary to perform a complex attaching operation, such as replacing an array of terminal pins in the header. If, for example, connectors and brackets of various structures corresponding to the attaching positions such as the upper or the lower side of the printed circuit board are initially prepared, more component parts are necessary and the dimensional accuracy of the card connectors are lowered through the cumulative addition of the manufacturing tolerances of the component parts.